Morris Motors

STORY & Photography | Vijay Sankar Anil

In the tranquil town of Walnut Grove, California, nestled between the scenic Sacramento Valley and the bustling Bay Area, stands the now iconic Streamline Moderne building housing Morris Motors. Owing to the scenic placement facing the Sacramento River, and their intimate repair and restoration services for foreign, domestic, and classic vehicles nationwide, this shop has become a favorite enthusiast hub.

Owner Sutton Morris, 41, and his father have dedicated themselves to personalized service, earning a loyal clientele over the past two decades. Sutton and his team have developed a reputation for taking on projects that other shops shy away from, becoming a beacon of hope for orphaned cars that might otherwise never find their way back to the road.

As you walk through the façade of this architectural gem, you are greeted by a workspace that is seemingly suspended in time. The pasty walls lead way to its warmly lit interior that is packed with a large selection of classic (mostly) Euro cars, historic automobile signs, period-correct tooling, books, old-time posters, and cobweb-covered spare parts that exude vintage charm.

The shop space is alive in some ways, as the sunlight peeks in through the openings in the barn-like roof, selectively spotlighting the subjects housed inside, slowly moving its focus arcing with the sun throughout the day. Spending time here is a serene escape from the flurry of everyday life.

Their team is dedicated to preserving classic cars’ authenticity and beauty, while also making earnest efforts to keep this hobby open and affordable to as many enthusiasts as they can. Sutton is always seen running around the shop between managing customer calls and dedicating time to studying the ins and outs of each car that crosses its doorway.

Morris Motors was born from a father-and-son partnership grounded in a mutual love for classic cars. The business began in a garage, where the two worked side by side on a client’s vintage collection before Sutton’s father officially established the shop in 2006. He ran it until his retirement in 2019, during which time Sutton supported the operation in the evenings—often working from lists of tasks his father left behind. These ranged from standard maintenance to more complex jobs like engine swaps in Volvos and other vehicles. Before launching Morris Motors, the father had spent years at Mercedes-Benz dealerships in Sacramento and San Francisco, previously ran his own repair business, and had a stint in Florida working on high-end exotics like Lamborghinis and Ferraris. Sutton was raised in that world, immersed in performance machines and a deep-rooted respect for the craft of automotive restoration and repair.

How did you get interested in cars?
Who and what were your influences?

I come from a long line of machinists and mechanics. On my father’s side, my grandfather was a Renaissance man who always practiced multiple things, and they were always mechanically inclined. On my mother’s side, my grandfather was a machinist for Boeing and McDonnell Douglas. He taught me how to use my hands because I had problems using my hands as a child. He’d give me some tasks, and thereby my mechanical interest was reinforced by pursuing it as a hobby. Working on cars became my escape as a child.

What is the mission of Morris Motors, and what type of cars do you specialize in?

We still don’t have a formal mission; I haven’t created it. I just go day by day. At the core, we are a shop that works on all the cars that nobody else wants to deal with. So, we get a lot of cars coming in from around the country. For instance, we had a car here today — a 1979 model — that’s had this problem since it was brand new. And we finally solved it — the car is now up for sale, so they wanted to get it fixed beforehand. We’re a place that has to go back 30 years and figure out what the engineers did way back then to make the car run and drive correctly today. We specialize in Mercedes, BMW, Porsche, Lamborghini and Ferrari, because many of them tend to interchange parts.

Do you have any favorite cars to work on, and any least favorite cars to work on?

I grew up in a family of mechanics and my uncle was a BMW guy who loved those cars in the 80s and 90s. And my dad was a Mercedes guy, so I grew up with the Mercedes of the same era. As I mentioned earlier, he worked on Ferraris and Lamborghinis on the side, while my uncle did Porsches on the side, so I had a vast learning experience with those manufacturers, which makes it easier to work on them. When I finally branched out and became a mechanic outside of working in my dad’s garage at home, I joined a Porsche racing shop down in South Bay, and all I did was tear engines down and rebuild them. Somewhere in between, I worked at Mercedes Benz and got trained in them.

I hardly turn wrenches now because I spend most of my time managing this shop. I was going through my own projects this week and thinking about how I really miss working on cars.

The aesthetic of the shop is unique. The cars, the tools and all the old memorabilia are placed amongst each other in an artistic abandon. Is that intentional or something that just came to be?

It just took shape on its own. Most of what I have here are treasure troves of posters that I saved through the years of being a kid that are now seen on eBay being coveted and sold for hundreds of dollars. But I’m not that person. I would never spend that kind of money on stuff to hang on the walls. A lot of it has been gifts from people, and each little poster, each little knick-knack has a little story to tell that came from somebody else. And most of it is just people coming in, being enamored by what we do, and then they want to add a little bit to the establishment. It’s a bit like ‘X’ marks the spot and thus proves that you were here.

Even the car parts that are being kept here — many of them are untouched for a long time. So, it just developed a certain aesthetic. They collect dust, and they look like they’ve been here forever. But the reality is that they’ll probably be used over time. At some point, yes, but till then you just knock the dust off them every couple of months, and make it look a little better. There are some machinery and tools that I learned how to use as a young man that we keep. I still pull them out and use them periodically. Sometimes I must try and recall how to use them. But almost everything here, even the oldest tools, is being used.

I see a lot of cars that are getting an extensive amount of restoration here. What are the timelines of the projects that you usually work on?

In truth, I try to do as little restoration as possible because it’s an endless path. Most of the time, it’s not economical or affordable for the person that owns the vehicle by the time you reach the end of the goal. What I try to do primarily is focus on making the car run and drive, and then we take it a little further and see what you want to do next. A lot of the cars that come in have a unique story to be told for that family or that individual who owns the car. For instance, it could be someone’s father’s car, and it happened to be their first vehicle, and they imported it from the country they came from, then it sat in the garage for years. As people find the end of their life cycle, it’s unique and heartwarming to see a lot of children or family members bring these cars in because they want to take them around the block one last time.

We cater to every client individually. It costs a lot of money to make some of these cars run and drive, and you can’t really afford to do it right off the bat. We work it into a budget, and as we achieve the initial goals, we move on to the next step, so it could take six months, or it could take a year. We could get it done in two months, or in two weeks. It depends on what the bottlenecks are — usually, it’s the rate at which we could spend money on the project. It tends to be more affordable if we take a longer period of time to complete the project. It could also be parts availability.

I have a little bit of an advantage with parts sourcing because I spent a lot of my career doing that for Mercedes-Benz, BMW and other manufacturers. So, I know where to find them. I can’t rely on the dealership to look up parts for say, a 1982 Mercedes; they may not have a clue. I have all the factory Microfiche cards, and I hunt through them for specific info. A Microfiche is a data card that appears like film negatives with a bunch of little tiles on them. And within those tiles are hundreds of pages of information. I learned about them early in my career at Mercedes-Benz, and then it transferred over to BMW and whatnot.

How has the enthusiast community responded to the work that you do here?

That’s a good question. Some enthusiasts see what it really takes to keep these cars alive. There is a lot going on behind the scenes to revive these classics to roadworthy status. They appreciate the effort, and as a result, we get cars shipped in from everywhere around the country. The enthusiast community is very much welcome here, and we tend to barter the price a little bit to try and keep it affordable for everyone. You could say this is part of the mission; it’s part of keeping the hobby affordable for the general public.

‘Mornings at Morris’ meets have been a success with the community. Do you have plans to keep continuing the shows in the future?

I would like to. I find it a little overwhelming because I never really get a day off when it’s show season. For the next year, I’ll probably scale it back and perhaps do three or four shows in total instead of once a month. I’ve been bouncing off some ideas with a friend of mine about organizing a rally — a drive that begins or ends here at the shop.

Do you have any bucket list cars or projects to work on in the future?

All of my cars seem to be on the bucket list. I’m too busy working on everybody else’s that I don’t work on my own anymore [laughs]. I have a C10 Chevy truck that I want to re-body onto a NASCAR chassis. That’s on my bucket list for this year.

Any highlights from your collection that you like to drive often?

I tend to drive a Ford Ranger more than anything else just because it flies under the radar. I have a vast variety of vintage M Sport cars, which I find each one is uniquely different in the driving style even though they share the same engines. And then the Mercedes too, they are distinct from each other, even if they come from the same era. My two favorite cars to drive aren’t currently my own. But I find that the Lancia Delta Integrale is fantastic. The other one would be the BMW E9 CS which was once part of my family’s collection.

This particular building — did you select it for its unique architecture? There are elements of the 1930s-40s Streamline Moderne in the façade.

It wasn’t initially like this. We lived about two miles down the road when this place became available. With the grace of the owner of Mercedes-Benz of Sacramento, my father had the opportunity to set up this shop. And then it eventually turned into a bygone era aesthetic because we work on vintage cars, and a wide variety of them. Before I became fully involved with Morris Motors, my dad and I only worked on Mercedes Benz here. Now we see a lot more diversity.

What are your future plans with the shop?

Right now, we are moving to add auto body refinishing and exterior services, which involves building a paint shop. My real goal is to turn this into more of a storage location. I like the concept of The Motoring Club in SF and LA — a storage location and an end-to-end service, including detailing. But it is also a hangout place for clients. This is a two-story building — my goal is to put the mechanical workshop downstairs and turn the upper floor into something nice. Because of where we’re located, if you plan your route when you’re driving here, it can be a fun drive.